


Magician

by luninosity



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Eventual Sex, Falling In Love, M/M, Magic, Quests, Redemption, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:13:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29702472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: The world’s greatest living magician, lying on his back on a rocky ledge halfway up a cliff and bathed in sunshine, felt the boat’s arrival on the shore below like an uninvited knock at a private door. He did not enjoy it.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 77
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sharing for inspiration and motivation (writing has been hard lately!) and because I love getting to talk to you all in comments, and sharing ideas and head-canon and joint delight! Technically this is the sequel/spin-off story for Sorceress (which was, way back when, my first pro story sale! it had a different title then, which I wasn't a huge fan of - editor's suggestion - and it's been republished by JMS Books!) but you don't really need to've read that one first; I think you can get everything you need to know from characters thinking about those events...
> 
> It's mostly about redemption. And quests. And unfairly attractive princes who show up on our magician's deserted island and ask for his help.

The world’s greatest living magician, lying on his back on a rocky ledge halfway up a cliff and bathed in sunshine, felt the boat’s arrival on the shore below like an uninvited knock at a private door. He did not enjoy it.

He didn’t move for a moment. He did not feel like it, and there’d be no rush. Nobody’d get past his wards.

He kept both eyes closed. Sun streaked red behind his eyelids; gold warmed his skin, his hair. His body soaked in the sensations of strong heated stone, sank into stone, became stone: learning how the rock felt when bathed in lush late-morning light. His edges blurred, softened: time slowed, thrummed, grew earthen and deep, salt-lapped and wind-etched. He might’ve been here for centuries, unhurried. Equilibrium and erosion, solidity and reshaping: a balance.

He had needed balance. Something he’d thought he’d known, once. Something he no longer understood.

He’d thought the island might help. Being rock for a while, or the wind, or the seaspray: being suspended amid them all. Being alone, because he was not sure he recalled how to be human, not well enough.

The island was warm—Lorre had always shamelessly adored being warm—and far enough from the mainland that he’d been mostly undisturbed, and close enough to trade routes that he could occasionally walk on water out to a boat and barter some repairs or some healing for some news of the Middle Lands and King Henry’s court at Averene and the Grand Sorceress Liliana. Lorre had promised not to magically check in on Lily or their daughter; he was attempting to keep that promise.

Equilibrium. Difficult. Sunlight was easier. Sunbeams were weightless. Stones did not have to think about human promises. Human perceptions.

The knock came again. It was not physical, or not entirely. It was a presence, an unexpected intruder standing below, shuffling feet in the sand and no doubt wondering where precisely a magician could be found, being faced with a towering blank cliff and no visible habitation.

Lorre sighed, pulled himself back from frayed edges and heavy sleepy light, and sat up, pulling a robe on in an unfussy tumble of blue and gold, mostly just because he liked the caress of silky fabric on bare skin. His senses shifted, dwindled: more human, though not entirely. He’d been a magician too long to not feel the threads of brilliance—cliff, vines, fish, grains of sand, sea-glass polished by waves—all around.

He peeked over the side of the ledge. Behind him the cave yawned lazily, reminding him of sanctuary: he could simply walk back inside, the way he had for several years now, and ignore the new arrival. That generally worked.

He was rather surprised someone’d found him at all. He wasn’t exactly hiding— _oh yes you are_ , said a tart little voice in his head, one that sounded like Lily’s—but the island, after a bit of work on his part, nearly always concealed itself from maps and navigation charts. At the beginning a few enterprising adventurers had managed to track it down, young heroes on quests or proving their worth by daring an enchanter’s lair or begging for Lorre’s assistance in some revenge or inheritance or magical artifact retrieval scheme.

He’d ignored all but two of them. The illusion-wall kept everyone out, simple and baffling; the island had fresh water but little in the way of food. Mostly the adventurers’d given up and gone home, years ago; he couldn’t in fact recall the face of the last one. Two had become nuisances, loud and shouting; one of those had actually threatened to drink poison, melodramatically demanding Lorre’s assistance in collecting a promised bride from a glass mountain, claiming he’d die without her.

The young man currently standing on the beach was neither loud nor melodramatic. In fact, he was calmly considering the sheer cliff-face, which revealed nothing; he stepped back across the small curve of beach, shaded his eyes, seemed to be measuring. After a second he put a hand up, obviously checking the edge of the cliff: having noticed the very slight discrepancy where sea-birds dropped behind the illusion-wall a fraction sooner than they should vanish in reality.

Intelligent, this one. Lorre dangled himself over the ledge at an angle which would’ve been dangerous for anyone else, and watched.

The young man had dark reddish-brown hair, the color of autumn; he wore it tied back, though a few wisps were escaping. He’d dressed for travel, not in shiny armor the way some knights and princes had: sturdy boots and comfortable trousers, a shirt in nicely woven but also practical fabric, a well-worn pack which he’d swung down to the sand. He wasn’t particularly tall, but not short: average, with nicely shaped shoulders and an air of straightforward competence, not trying for impressive or intimidating.

Lorre, despite annoyance about the interruption, couldn’t help but approve. At least this one had some sense, and didn’t walk around clanking in metal under the shimmering sun.

The young man called up, “Hello?” His voice was quite nice as well, not demanding, lightly accented with the burr of the Mountain Marches but in the way of someone who’d been carefully sent to the best schools down South. “Grand Sorcerer?”

Lorre mentally snorted. He didn’t have a proper title, not any longer; if anyone did, it’d be Lily. His former lover, now wife of the brother of the King of Averene, was by default the last Grand Sorceress of the Middle Lands; she’d started up the old magician’s school again, welcoming and training apprentices. Lily always had been better with people. Lorre was not precisely welcome in Averene.

The young man said mildly, “I expect this is a test; I thought you would do that, you know,” as if he thought that Lorre might answer, as if they were having a conversation; and looked around. “I’m meant to find you, is that it?”

That was the opposite of it. Lorre on a good day barely recalled how to be human, and certainly wasn’t fit to interact with them. He’d lost his temper with the melodramatic poison-carrying prince, strolled invisibly onto the shore, asked the poison to turn itself into a sleeping draught, and then poured it into the idiot’s water flask. Then he’d found a passing ship and dumped the snoring body onto its deck. He hadn’t known the destination, and hadn’t bothered to find out.

His current young man was looking at driftwood. Lorre wondered why. He was getting a bit dizzy from leaning nearly upside down; he considered the sensation with some surprise. A swoop of gold swung into his eyes, distracting and momentarily baffling; he pushed the strands of his hair back with magic.

The young man found a stick, one that evidently met his standards for length and strength. He kept it in front of himself; he walked deliberately toward the cliff, and the illusion.

Oh. Clever. Avoiding traps. Testing a theory. Lorre found himself impressed, particularly when the young man watched the tip of the driftwood vanish and nodded to himself and then set rocks down to neatly mark the spot.

The island was not large, and the beach even smaller: a jut of cliff, a tangle of vines, a small lagoon and a trickle of water down to the shore. The illusion hid the cave-opening, but there wasn’t really anywhere else for someone to be; the young man figured that out within an hour or so of methodical exploration, and returned to the shore, and looked thoughtfully at the cliffs. He’d rolled up his sleeves and undone the ties of his shirt, given the heat; he had a vine-leaf in his hair, along with a hint of sweat.

Lorre, in some ways still very much human, couldn’t not stare. Something about those forearms under the rolled-up sleeves. That hint of well-muscled chest. The casual ripple of motion, broad shoulders, heroic thighs.

“I suppose,” the young man said, very wry, still looking at the cliff as if perfectly aware Lorre was watching, “I should introduce myself. I think I forgot to, earlier.”

I suppose you should, Lorre agreed silently. Since you’re here. Disrupting my life.

He ignored the fact that he’d had no real plans. Meditation. Quiet. A hope for calm.

A hint of dragon-fire slid through his veins, under his skin. A memory. Restless. Beckoning. Dangerous.

“My name is Gareth,” the young man said, “Prince of the Mountain Marches, Lord of Honeywood, if the titles matter to you. King Ardan is my older brother. And we need your help. Desperately.”

Lorre found himself obscurely disappointed by this ordinariness. A request for aid, a desire for quick magical solutions. So small. So earth-bound. Just like all the rest.

He flipped himself back up onto the ledge, getting up. He had spiced wine in the pantry, and a book on the theory of sea-witches, magic-users hidden in the ocean, which no one had ever verified, but which might be possible, down in the deeps.

“The mountain bandits have a mage,” the young man—Gareth—told the air. “This year. They’ve always come—but it’s worse, it’s so much worse—and the villages need us, and we’ve never had a standing army, we’re a small kingdom and we mostly have a lot of goats—and they have magic now, and then my uncle betrayed us, and—” He stopped, voice exhausted, defeated. “You’re here. You _must_ be here. Are you listening?”

No, Lorre nearly said. I’ve been an ancient oak, a speaking raven, the bones of the earth. I’ve nearly killed a king and then saved him again, mostly because my former lover asked and I felt generous. I’ve turned myself into a dragon to see whether I could, and I could, though I got lost in the doing of it. I’ve watched rulers come and go, and magic’s still been here, and I’ve still been here. Why should I care about you and your goats?

But he thought suddenly of sunlight on his skin. Of the way he liked sensation, the whisper of silk on his legs or the taste of strawberries.

He thought of Lily’s voice, and his daughter’s face. He’d been younger then, and so had Lily; they’d thought they were, if not in love, at least made for each other, the strongest two magicians in the world. They’d made Merlyn—Merry, Lily called her now—and Lorre had complicated feelings about that too.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever been meant to be a father. He had not thought about the reality of a baby, and he had not known what would be expected of him; he had not, in all his long life, spent much time with uninteresting small babbling humans.

He had been disappointed, back then, when Merry had not shown any magical ability at all; he’d only cared about the power, or at least the person he’d been then had only cared about power.

But he’d thought he’d been fighting for them all: magic, magicians, their welcome at Court, in the face of growing Church opposition. He’d burned with it: righteous anger, a cause, his own temper.

Which had, he reflected ruefully, ended in banishment. Not that he’d cared; he’d simply lost himself in the magic, in testing himself, in explorations. More and further and deeper. Seeing what he could do, what he could become, simply because he could.

Lily—and Merry—had saved him, then. Reminders of this self, this person: someone who liked summer and sweetness and satin, who might be a terrible parent but would never, never even in dragon’s form, harm his daughter. He’d found a way back.

And he’d left again, because he was _not_ entirely human, and he was reckless, and he was single-minded and self-indulgent, and he knew all that. He could not be someone else, someone like the ridiculously beautiful king’s brother Lily had fallen in love with, fiercely loyal and burningly devoted to family and country. He could only be himself, and so that self was probably best far away from anyone he might harm. He’d been trying.

He thought, the pinprick of it sleeting in like autumn rain: I like goat’s milk cheese. And honey. And pleasure. Little things that this body enjoys. Perhaps Prince Gareth enjoys his goats. And doesn’t want them stolen.

He peeked down again. The prince had sat down, disconsolate, on a large rock. His shoulders slumped.

Lorre considered options. He did not help people, famously so. If he did so once, others would expect it. If he reappeared, he’d disturb the world: a power reemerging. If he took sides in a ridiculous tiny Northern border conflict—

He was actually considering it. He’d spent too long with rocks for company.

Gareth got up. Lorre blinked, startled, and paid attention.

The prince spent some time gathering stones. Setting them out. Making a message on the sand: PLEASE HELP US.

That was also fairly clever. A constant reminder, not as obnoxious as hurling stones at the barrier, but visible.

The day had become afternoon, all gold and green and blue and white, sun and sea and sky and sand. Lorre, sitting on his rock balcony, one leg swinging, listened to the leap of distant dolphins and felt the purr of the world under his hand, resting on stone. The waves coiled and crashed, steady as tides.

Gareth was making a shelter out of branches and fronds, building a small firepit, evidently having decided to settle in. Lorre had had heroes attempt to outwait him before; it never worked.

Gareth, once satisfied with the shelter, added a new rock-message. This one said: I CAN WAIT.

He meant it, too: he pulled out a book, and sat back down on the big sun-warmed rock. After a few minutes he took off his boots, and wiggled toes in hot sand.

Lorre caught himself wanting to laugh. He’d done the exact same thing upon first finding this island: boots off, bare skin, luxuriating in the feel.

And the prince had even brought a book. So well prepared. And so literary. Lorre could count on about three fingers the number of mighty-thewed questing heroes who’d done that.

He rather wanted to know what book it was.

Gareth said, after a few moments, “I see why you like it here, you know.” Once again he sounded utterly at ease with addressing the air, as if they were having a conversation. “I do too. It’s warm, and peaceful, and there’s not a world out there, waiting…you can be alone. And I expect magicians need to be alone. I feel like I would. I imagine it’s like being a prince, everybody asking you for help, for solutions…”

Well. Yes. And no. Lorre stopped swinging his leg and leaned in again, halfway up a cliff.

“Or it’s not like that at all. I wouldn’t know. Not being magical. But the problem is…I _am_ part of the world. I can’t not be. And so are you. You must be.” Gareth glanced around. “It is lovely here. And you haven’t thrown me out yet, like you did with the Prince of Thistlemare, so you _are_ listening.”

“I am _not_ ,” Lorre said, half irritated and half fascinated; and then he realized that of course emotions became deed for him half the time, and the prince had definitely heard his voice.

“I thought so,” Gareth announced, somehow managing to be smug without being too obnoxious about it. “Of course you care. You’re only seeing if I’m determined enough to be worth helping, right?”

Lorre, properly horrified, snapped, “Not at all. I’m waiting for you to give up and go away. What book are you reading?”

“This?” The prince held it up, turned it about. The gilt letters on the scarlet binding flashed in sun. “Come out and I’ll tell you. Do magicians like being bribed with books?”

“I’m not a kitten and you’re not dangling a fish.” And this was now easily the strangest conversation he’d had in literal years, not counting attempts to wrap his head around being a rock. “I could simply take it.”

“But you won’t.”

“What makes you think I won’t?”

“You haven’t yet.”

“I’ve decided I ought to dislike you.”

“I’m very sorry about that,” the prince said, and he even sounded genuinely apologetic. “Will that matter? If I’m asking for your help?”

Lorre slid down from the ledge. The fall would’ve hurt if he’d been someone else, including his younger self once upon a time. This afternoon he merely stepped down through air, let himself become air fleetingly, let the impact dissolve and fade. He left his illusion-barrier up, and kept himself unseen, walking over.

Now that they stood on the same ground, he noticed that the prince was a fraction shorter than his own height. Good. “Why should I help you?”

“It’s a worthy cause—”

“They always are.”

“Our home is—”

“In peril. Those always are, too. Or if not your home, your beloved betrothed. Or your enchanted sword. Or your favorite horse. Something.”

Gareth’s cheeks had gone pink with embarrassment or anger; he had such fair skin that emotion showed readily. But he managed to keep his voice even. “My home. My brother. Our people. Is there anything you care about? Anything you’d fight to save?”

“Not necessarily,” Lorre said. “I’ve found it depends on the circumstances and the context. Why did you think I might help you? I don’t help anyone.”

“You wouldn’t—” Gareth stopped. His eyes changed. “Not even yourself?”

Lorre couldn’t help it: he had to laugh. “A threat? Honestly?”

“It’s not a threat. You wouldn’t even fight to protect yourself?”

“I’m capable of great and terrible things,” Lorre told him. The sand felt soft, white and hot, shifting underfoot. “It’s always possible the world would be better off without me in it. There are other magicians you could’ve found. I’m not the only one.”

“You’re not. But you’re the most powerful.”

“And you need the most powerful.” The words hurt. He had not expected them to. They were true: he was indeed, without exaggeration, the most powerful magician that he knew of. He had said as much himself, both with and without arrogance, on many occasions.

He did not think, these days, that _most powerful_ meant _best_.

He crossed both arms, hastily scooped some falling robe back onto a bare shoulder, felt a brush of breeze against his shoulder. He did not know what his hair might be doing; he’d run fingers through it that morning and told it to behave. It mostly did.

Perhaps his appearance would inspire a lack of confidence. And this disconcerting young prince would go away.

He did not entirely make a decision, but part of the concealing shield-barrier faded anyway: present, faintly shining, but now more transparent.

Gareth’s breath caught.

Lorre raised an eyebrow. “Surprise. I’ve been here all along.”

The prince’s eyes got wider, taking him in. Up close, their color held layers of cinnamon-bark and spice-brown, rich and velvety, a few shades more chocolate than his autumn hair.

Lorre, not used to being looked at by anyone but waves and stones and vines these days, wondered briefly if he’d forgotten something about tying a robe and visible anatomy. He checked, glancing down, but the important bits seemed to be covered up. And he didn’t think he’d lost any pieces of himself; the edges might be a little indistinct, a little hazy, but he was relatively sure he wasn’t made of stone or sunlight.

He surreptitiously did a check of that too. No, still the body he remembered: lightly tanned skin, lean muscle, messy blond hair, blue eyes Lily had once compared to sapphires in a way that hadn’t been a compliment, sharp as jewels. Older, but he’d never shown his age; he suspected he constantly made himself look the way he thought he should look, not entirely consciously. He felt older, though.

He sighed. He’d probably forgotten something about boring human etiquette. Shocked a sheltered rustic goat-herding prince. “Should I have put on shoes? Or trousers? I might have some someplace.”

Gareth, still gazing at him, breathed, “You’re not what I expected.”

“What did you expect? A long white beard and general benevolence?”

“No. I know you’re…I know the stories. Some of them.” A pause, a lip-lick. “I don’t know what I expected. But I need your help. Please.”

“I’m not considering it. What would you want me to do? If I did.”

“Magic,” Gareth said. His expression was far too hopeful.

“Yes, thank you, magicians do magic, and I can’t imagine you’re asking for my skill at embroidery. What are you asking for, precisely? Turning your invaders into sheep, transforming all their ale into milk, mystically beheading their leader in the dead of night? Shoring up your brother’s claim on the throne, after? Helping him seek revenge? Assisting in his slow takeover of the North, perhaps, and reestablishing the old Winter Empire?”

“The sheep might be useful. I promise you we’re not planning any of that. Embroidery?”

“So many kings make promises.” Lorre scooped a ball of seawater out of the ocean, spun it around, made it orbit his hand: blue-green and luminous. Gareth’s gaze tracked this casual display of power; Lorre mostly simply liked having something to do with his hands, and the ocean didn’t mind. “And thread-magic’s a skill. Anything can hold power if you weave in enough, and I used to like the idea of sending someone a hand-stitched gift with a hidden charm.”

“And,” Gareth said, “the idea of being more clever than anyone.”

“Magicians are all arrogant,” Lorre said. “And brilliant, and duplicitous, mostly because we can be. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. What book is it, again?”

Gareth looked at the spine. Light glinted from gilt. “Is it a trade? Do I need to bargain with you?”

“Oh, for the last time—” He flipped the sea-ball into the air, let it drop swiftly, caught it right above Gareth’s head. Gareth, he observed, did not flinch. “This isn’t a bargain.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Gareth said.

“Sorry, what?”

“About yourself. Being duplicitous. You haven’t lied to me once yet.”

Lorre looked at his illusion-wall, and raised both eyebrows.

“You gave me a challenge,” Gareth said. “That’s not a lie. You’ve been nothing but honest. About not wanting to help, needing convincing, all of that. You wanted me to think about the consequences of bringing you to the North, and I have. You keep suggesting I tell you about my book, so I’m assuming there’s some sort of rule and you can’t tell me directly but you’re trying to help.”

Lorre sputtered, disarmed by persistent misreading of himself as somehow benevolent. Gareth did know who he was; how was this terrible interpretation possible?

The prince added enthusiastically, “It’s a copy of Lady Mariah Cavendra’s _Moon-World_ , if you haven’t read it. Philosophy, but also sort of a novel. From about a hundred years ago, but fascinating. The other worlds she imagines—travel to the stars—”

“I _have_ read it,” Lorre said. “Not for eighty-two years, though. I’m in it. Briefly. The very attractive young man who dismisses her ideas as silly and unimportant, near the beginning. She didn’t like me much.”

“Why not?”

“She thought I was a myopic ass who believed that magic alone could solve the world’s problems, when I wasn’t busy seducing attractive and useful courtiers. She was right. How do you like it? The book.”

“I’ve read it before,” Gareth said. “I do like it. It’s optimistic about people and what they can do. Do you want it?”

“Optimism is generally misplaced. And her characters aren’t realistic. And—”

“That’s not a no.”

“That’s not—” Lorre flicked the sea-ball back into the ocean; he felt it lose its shape, unfurling, water flowing back into the whole. A small fish darted up, a curious silver quickness along a string of power, a strand in the web of the world. “Come up and have tea with me. Or wine. Or whatever I’ve got. Tell me how you managed to find me here. I’m not leaving with you.”

“Still not a lie,” Gareth said serenely. “You just don’t believe I’ll succeed. Tea, please, if you’re offering.”

“I could poison you.”

“You could’ve disposed of me without ever saying hello. How do we get up there? Scale the cliff? Or is there a magic door?”

“There’s magic, like _this_ ,” Lorre retorted, possessed by a strange burning impulse to show this irritating unflappable young man precisely what the most powerful magician alive could do, and put a hand on Gareth’s wrist.

The sand, the warmth, the nearness of the sea: those all melted away, dissolved into rock and sun and a cave-mouth like watercolors overlapping, smudged and wet and blurring. The air was not precisely air, and Lorre’s chest felt tight, the way it always did in the space between spaces; he could step from one frame of the world to the next, moving through moments in a painting of time and the world, but it was one of the harder skills to practice even with his heritage and talents, and even harder to bring someone along.

Gareth’s wrist was tangible and very human in his grip, a recognizable solid point. The young prince was both a reassurance and a bit more weight to pull through the threads of the tapestry, but the distance was short and familiar. Lorre could manage that much with ease.

Also, he wanted to see Gareth’s face on the other side.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lorre makes a decision.

The carved-out curl of rock walls took shape and became Lorre’s small kitchen area, a set of shelves, a kettle and a bottle of palm wine and a pile of colorful fruit. His home wavered, steadied, grew reassuringly perceptible. Molded cave-walls and window-openings bloomed; he knew where they were, and felt the landing in his bones.

His lungs filled. He let go of Gareth’s arm, put an unobtrusive hand on his driftwood table, straightened his shoulders. The stone lay cool against his toes, after the heat of the sand.

Gareth stood utterly still beside him and the table. Gazed at him wide-eyed, silenced, lips parted.

Lorre knew that look. Awe, amazement, stupefied reverence: he’d seen it all before.

He’d meant to stun the prince into a lack of further argument. He found, looking at Gareth’s face, that he did not prefer those competent leaf-brown eyes left wordless and worshipful.

He found his kettle, perched helpfully on a natural stone outcropping. “Tea, you said. I have…cinnamon and wild mallow, lemongrass and summer strawberry, and chamomile.” He touched the stone wall, the kettle, while talking; they sang to his fingers, tempted his taste buds, reminded him that he was this shape and this shape meant him, told him that he knew this place as more than a glittering web of light and potential.

“Lemongrass and strawberry—you do that every time?” Gareth’s voice was very quiet. A hush in Northern hills. A snowfall, muffling sound. But he _had_ asked; he’d dared to ask the magician a question, even in the wake of power.

Lorre located tea. The prince had picked his own personal favorite, no doubt a coincidence. “Normally it’s easier to just ask the air to be stairs for a moment.”

Gareth set the book—it’d inadvertently come along, being in his hand—on the table. He also remained bootless, not having had the chance to put them back on. His feet were bare and pale against stone. “I can do that for you. I mean the tea. Not the air. Does it hurt you? What you just did.”

“No,” Lorre said, surprised. “It’s not—no. It’s not a hurt. I can do anything; you know the stories, that’s why you’re here. And no, you can’t, about the tea. Unless you can get water out of a rock.”

“Can you?”

“That one’s easy.” It was. He’d drawn water up through the cliff already, filtering it and cleansing it; the small pool of it lay where he’d stored it, sealed in stone and casually heated by strands of magic, linking sun and light to clear fresh liquid. Lorre also liked hot baths, and saw no particular reason to give up comfort just because he was avoiding the universe on a tiny island.

He asked the water, with a touch, to emerge from stone; he asked the stone to give way, fingers invisibly nudging the lines of candlelight all around him. Water slid from rock, formed a stream, answered him and thus became him, in a way, for a moment; or he became it, filling the kettle, heating as he fed vitality into it.

Gareth was back to looking stunned. Lorre said, “You can find mugs,” and looked around. He thought he did have two; he’d found them in an old sea-chest underwater when he’d wanted them, and had reminded all the dirt and salt, everything that wasn’t a proper mug, to fall away and leave clean pewter.

The kitchen wasn’t precisely a mess, because he did tidy up after himself, but he also hadn’t bothered to carve out cupboards or drawers, and he was the only person living here. A clean plate balanced itself carefully on a shelf between a fluffy pink flower in a bowl and a stray spoon, and a palm frond waltzed precariously on the table’s corner with a centuries-old scroll discussing the correct composition of ink for magical instructional texts; they all regarded Gareth with interest.

Gareth found both mugs, still very quiet. He looked down into steam as Lorre poured; clouds of lemon and strawberry kissed his cheeks, his long eyelashes. More strands of his autumn-leaf hair had come loose from the tie.

He said, “You _can_ do anything. Can’t you?”

“Of course I can,” Lorre said, flippant. “Honey?”

“No. Thank you. Where do you even get—”

“I can call a passing merchant vessel over if I need it. They’ll never remember who they’ve traded with, after. Or where they put into port. But it is a trade. I have a lot of gold. Speaking of ships, how did you find me? This island’s meant to be…an island. Singular. Unplottable.”

“I went to our Goddess chapel,” Gareth said, “and asked for help, and She didn't, not exactly, but I was looking at the carvings, the stories, and I thought, if I could find the best magician in the world, so maybe that'd be an answer…I went down to Averene, to the capital, and asked about you at the Magicians’ School, but they wouldn’t answer any questions about you, so I went out to the Dark Quarter and gave a man a lot of silver in exchange for a map to what was supposed to be my heart’s desire, but that just kept pointing straight out into the ocean, and I thought, well, maybe it’s not working, but then again maybe you were out here somewhere, so I hired a boat—well, actually I hired on as crew, because I was sort of running out of silver by then, but they said they wanted to see if I actually found an island, and they laughed—”

“Anyone currently passing themselves off as a magician in the Dark Quarter has about the same amount of power as a thimble. A map to your heart’s desire? You expected that to work?”

“To help Dan,” Gareth said, forgetting briefly to call his brother King Ardan. “To try to protect the Marches. Yes, of course I hoped it’d work. What else would my heart’s desire be? That’s why I’m _here_.”

“Someone rescue me from all heroes,” Lorre grumbled into his tea. “Maps and quests and misguided hope…”

“But it did work,” Gareth pointed out, obviously not aware of polite etiquette involving the ignoring of sarcastic asides. “I found you. And I must be doing well enough at your tests. No one else has ever got this far.”

“How would you know whether they had?”

“You’d’ve helped them. We’d’ve heard.”

“Not,” Lorre said, “if they _only_ got this far, and I devoured them at the last moment,” and gave the prince a smile, with teeth.

He’d once been a dragon, after all.

Gareth swallowed. Hard. But he did not look away. “I know who you are. Is that what you plan to do? Eat me?” His tone said _I’m pretty sure not but I’m just checking_ , burnished with the gleam of Northern accent.

“Maybe it’s the price for my assistance.” Lorre twirled a fingertip in the air above his own tea; steam rose, danced, formed a sailing ship, blew away. “You. Belonging to me. Metaphorical consumption. Or even literal. Would you pay that price?”

Gareth breathed in, breathed out. His hands had tightened around his mug of tea. But his eyes were absolutely unflinching, earth-brown and honest. “Yes.”

Lorre blinked at him. That’d come with no hesitation at all. No wavering. “…yes?”

“Yes. Whatever you ask. I’ll do it.” Gareth paused. “I would ask…I know I can’t bargain, your terms are your terms, but…if there’s a price, I want to pay it all. Nothing from my brother or my people. The Marches mostly have goats in any case. Goats and mountains and turnips. Nothing you’d want. Please.”

“What on this or any other world would I do with a goat? Don’t answer that,” Lorre added hastily, because Gareth had opened his mouth, “it’s rhetorical and I do know about the existence of cheese. What would I do with _you_?”

Pink rose across Gareth’s cheekbones; he was still young, and technically a prince even if the Marches consisted of goat’s milk and rocks, and he had clearly not expected to have to explain his own worth as a bargaining chip.

But, to his credit, he answered steadily. “Anything you want. If you could use someone to—to help with magical experiments, or to organize your library, I’ll do that. If you need someone to go on a quest and bring back a powerful artifact, I’ll do that. If you want me to churn butter or wash dishes I can do that. I know how to make oat-cakes and fry trout and scrub wine stains out of a good linen shirt. If there’s something I don’t know, I can learn.”

“Why do you think I’m in need of a housekeeper and cook?”

Gareth glanced around. “Why’s there a fork being a bookmark in that encyclopedia?”

“It wants to be there. What if I ask you to sacrifice someone? To, in a word, kill them? As part of your service to me.”

A very small crack appeared in Gareth’s expression: a line between dark eyebrows, a clench of heroic jaw. “I’d rather you didn’t ask.”

“I’m certain you would.”

“I’ve never—I’ve gone out on border patrol, of course, with the bandits around, but—I’ve only ever been in one skirmish. And no one died. I know you could make me do your bidding. And I did say whatever you ask. But I think…in any case I think I’d be more useful in some other way.”

Lorre let that sentence hang in the air a moment. And then leaned in, lifted eyebrows, and murmured, “What other uses might I have for a muscular young man, do you think?”

He watched Gareth’s face. Thoroughly terrible at concealment, this prince: everything transparent. Interestingly enough, Gareth went from astonished to cherry-red blushing in what had to be record time, not without a glance at Lorre himself, followed by some ferocious staring into tea.

Lorre, entertained, waited.

“Um.” Gareth emerged from the shelter of his mug. His cheeks were still flushed. “Yes. If that’s—if you would want—I said anything. I’ll do that too. I just—” He stopped, blushed more, straightened his shoulders: squaring up to the idea. “Of course you’re lonely. Being alone. Here. Yes, of course, I see. I wouldn’t mind.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“No one,” Gareth said, earnest, “should be lonely. I’d like to help. If that would help.”

“You even mean it.”

“Of course I do!”

“Of all the idiotic self-sacrificing heroes—” Lorre stared at him, flailed a hand in wordless bafflement, scrabbled for words. “That’s not a bargain!”

“Oh.” Gareth’s eyebrows tugged together. “Why not? Also, did you know you just waved a hand through the kettle?”

He’d felt vague heat. Hadn’t registered the presence of solidity. Too busy dissolving into frustration. “I meant to. I’m not human. You’d still offer to warm my bed?”

“So that _is_ what you want?”

“No!” Lorre got a hand on the mug of tea before it could leap upward in response to his reaction. He’d thought he’d been learning control.

And that thought, those memories, hit like ice. Consequences right down his back, chilling his spine. Everything he’d done, and now tried not to do.

He shut his eyes, and breathed in, and out. Magic shivered and scurried and sang along all the strings of his being: little swinging swaying bolts of light reached out to other lights, caught the threads of the universe, wanted to play.

He made himself feel the hardness of his kettle, taste the salt and honey of the air, recognize his chest expanding with an inhale.

Himself. Real. Not a stream or a seagull or a sun-flare made of gold.

Something touched his arm. A weight. Fingers, a palm, the calluses of someone who wasn’t a farmer by trade but who’d learned how to do the same work his people did. Gareth’s voice said cautiously, “Er…are you certain you’re all right? Is there anything I can do?”

Lorre opened both eyes. “Why would you do that?” Gareth had leaned across the table to touch him, and had left the hand resting on Lorre’s bare forearm, just at the edge of his robe’s sleeve.

“Why would I offer?” Gareth’s eyebrows lifted: a genuine smile popped up. “Because everyone needs help sometimes? My mother always says so.”

“I meant, why would you touch a sorcerer who could turn you into a mouse.”

“Because I’m fairly sure you won’t.” Gareth moved the hand. Put it back around his mug, fiddling with the handle. “And because you might’ve needed me for that. An anchor. Or not. I don’t know what magicians need. I just thought I’d try.”

“You just thought you’d try.”

“I came to ask _you_ for help,” Gareth said. “Because everyone needs help, sometimes. And our people are being hurt. Mountain villages raided, herds and stores taken in the night, grazing grounds iced over or blocked by avalanches, merchant caravans attacked on the road. We can’t fight back. We don’t know how to fight magic. I’ll give you anything. And I’ll help you, if you need it. _Not_ because I’ve made a vow to serve you—though I will, I’ll swear to the Goddess or on my mother’s life or whatever oath you want—but because it’s the right thing to do. The same way I hope you’d help us. Please.”

“I can’t,” Lorre said. “I—I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“No. I mean it’s complicated. It’s not what you think.”

“I think,” Gareth said, “that I had to explain to little Elsie Carrol that her father wouldn’t be coming home, because he tried to stand guard in the night and something he couldn’t fight off froze him solid. Her mother died two years ago from the summer fever. Elsie’s ten.”

“Why did you have to—”

“Who else should? Dan’s their king, I’m their prince, we’re the ones who’re there. We’re there _for them_.” Gareth’s eyes were smoky chocolate now, angry not entirely at Lorre but on behalf of his people’s pain. “We help bring in the harvest and buy a round at the tavern when someone has a baby and try to do the best we can when someone needs justice or a judgement or a road repaired. I can’t fight magic in the night, but I can hug a little girl who’s lost her father, and then maybe I can go and find someone who _does_ know how to fight magic. We’re supposed to be _able_ to help. That’s what princes are _for_.” He stopped, breathless and impassioned; he visibly reached for calm, took a shaky breath, let it go. “But you don’t care. Or you don’t want to care. You could save us with a thought, and you won’t.”

“It’s not that,” Lorre said. “It’s _not_.”

Gareth’s hand clamped down around the mug. “Isn’t it?”

“I can’t—” Lorre ran a hand through his hair, tugging golden strands, feeling utterly and perilously human for once: at a loss for a response. Every one of Gareth’s words stung. Lancets into raw wounds. Salt across unhealed spots. “Why do you think I’m here? Away from everyone? Alone?”

“I know you don’t want distractions,” Gareth said. “I knew you’d left the—the whole world, I suppose. But I thought…if the cause was right, if it was important enough…if someone proved to you that they were serious, that it mattered…”

“I’m _not a hero_ ,” Lorre said. “Ask anyone. Ask the Grand Sorceress. You said you know who I am. I’m not what you need. I’m—” He saw the slump in Gareth’s shoulders; he saw the ache in dark eyes, the resignation, the hurt.

The kitchen tasted of strawberry tea, with honey. Sunlight spilled in through a window, framed in rock, and traced light across the table, almost up to Gareth’s arm. Sensible clothing, preparation, and generosity; and, Lorre noticed all over again, bare feet.

Because Gareth hadn’t had time to put boots on. Because he, Lorre, had been showing off, and had swept them both up here.

He’d hurt someone, again. He hadn’t meant to. He’d tried not to. He’d thought, if he could remove himself from other people—

But that hadn’t worked. Nothing he did could change that outcome, it seemed.

He remembered a fight with Lily, abruptly: an early fight, before they’d ever had a child, before Lorre had left and Lily’d gone on to become the Grand Sorceress Liliana. _You run_ , she’d said. _You tell people they’re wrong and stupid, you test boundaries and you argue with kings, you turn the day into night just to see if you can, and then you leave without ever facing any consequences. Who’d try to make you, anyway? No one ever could. So you never stay._

She hadn’t even shouted. Not that time. She’d sounded sad. And he’d been surprised: of course he’d argue with someone who was wrong, of course he’d test the depths of his power to see what might be possible, of course he’d move on to the next challenge after that.

Younger him, Lorre thought—not for the first time—had been just as much of an idiot as every hero he’d ever met, only in a different way.

He’d thought that coming to this island _was_ facing the consequences. If he was that dangerous, if he was the peril, surely he ought to remove that peril. The best for everyone. Logical.

But it hadn’t been. And the shadow in Gareth’s eyes, the funeral behind shining rich brown color, admonished him.

Lorre didn’t know anything about the Mountain Marches. A tiny independent kingdom. Not wealthy. Rich in goats and rocks and devoted princes, apparently.

He had no particular reason to care. He had every reason not to intervene: putting himself and his power back into play would shift the balance of the world, politically, magically, diplomatically, personally. As far as the bandits having a magician, Lily and her newly rebuilt School could likely handle that, assuming Gareth’s brother made a formal request for aid. The greatest sorcerer in history did not fight mountain bandits over goat-theft, and probably shouldn’t, for all those political and diplomatic reasons.

He eyed the sun-stripe on the table. It said nothing, noncommittal. Gareth also said nothing, just scrubbed both hands over his face: weary, losing hope, exhausted.

Gareth had reached out to him. Had put a hand on his arm, heedless of potential danger. Had wanted to help.

Lorre said, looking over through sunlight, “It’s not a bargain.”

Gareth lifted his head, startled. Another loop of auburn hair slid out of its confinement and forward into his face.

“It’s not a bargain,” Lorre said, “because it isn’t. You don’t owe me anything. And, for the record, I wouldn’t ask you to warm my bed if you were in some sort of service to me. Not that I’m asking now, either. I’ve always preferred partners who _aren’t_ doing it out of obligation or pity or some sort of entirely unjustified fear that I’ll make them impotent if they say no. I don’t know where that rumor started; I’ve never even _done_ that. Not that I wouldn’t, but I didn’t. In any case, you don’t owe me your bed or anything else.”

“You wouldn’t do that…” Gareth paused. Dawn came up over freshly-tilled earth, in his gaze: hope warring with night. “You said it wasn’t a bargain. And I don’t owe you. But…does that mean…”

“No promises. I’m historically terrible at negotiation, and I tend to annoy kings and queens and chief ministers and priestesses. But I do know something about magic.”

“You’re going to help us,” Gareth breathed. “ _You_.”

“I’m going,” Lorre said, a bit mournfully, “to miss being warm.”

“But…why?”

“Because you live someplace with a thoroughly unreasonable amount of winter?”

“I meant why would you—”

“I know,” Lorre said. “Let’s say it’s just because I’ve decided to. Magicians. Whimsical. Capricious. All of that. We’ll leave in, oh, two hours. I need time to pack. And to regret losing my favorite winter coat, seventy years ago. No one makes dye that exact shade of blue anymore. Would you like your boots? And your pack? Here you are.”

Gareth regarded the abrupt arrival of his possessions with the expression of someone getting used to extraordinary happenings but nevertheless fascinated each time. “What shade of blue?”

“Periwinkle flower, crushed lapis lazuli, and a touch of indigo. Hand-dyed in a lovely workshop in Variennes that’s been gone for at least fifty years by now, and of course I left most of my wardrobe behind when getting exiled, and I did try to get it back but they’d burned everything. Actually it’ll be closer to three hours. I need time to make us a boat.”

“To _make_ —” Gareth visibly decided to let that one go. “Can I help?”

“Not with the boat. We could use provisions. Nectarines, bread, water, whatever else you want. I’ll seal this place temporarily when we’re gone, but that won’t do much for preserving the fruit and such, so you might as well bring it. Besides, I like nectarines.”

“I still don’t know why,” Gareth said. “I mean why you’re helping us. Me. What changed your mind?”

“I told you not to ask.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Didn’t I? I meant to. I could turn you into a mouse just for the practice.”

“Thank you,” Gareth said. “I don’t know how to say it—what would be enough—anything you want. Thank you.”

“I haven’t done anything yet,” Lorre said, “don’t,” and turned to go into the other room, wondering when he’d last seen his own boots. As he turned, he saw Gareth picking up a nectarine, gazing at it, eyes soft with wonder.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a quest begins. Or at least some boat-building.

Boat-building caused a minor argument almost immediately. Gareth, now that the most powerful magician alive had agreed to assist him, was understandably in a hurry to get started. Lorre, centuries older and still not quite sure why he’d agreed, found himself being practical. This was a new sensation, and he wasn’t certain he enjoyed it.

“I imagine,” Gareth said, not quite a question, “that there’s a reason we’re not just magically traveling. The way you brought us to your rooms.”

“There is.” Lorre considered kelp, driftwood, a tangle of sea-wrack. Settled down cross-legged among assembled pieces. Wiggled toes in the sand. He hadn’t bothered to change just yet; he appreciated the satin tumble of his robe and the heat of the late afternoon on his skin. It’d be night by the time they departed, but a humid sort of night, laced with frangipani and sugar and sea-salt. For now.

“I’m not arguing,” Gareth tried.

“Good.”

“I was only wondering—”

“It’ll take three days or so for us to reach Whiskey Harbor—that’s still the closest Northern port, right? Which is better than three weeks, so be grateful.”

Gareth said, “But you—” and stopped, obviously trying not to protest.

“I can do _nearly_ anything,” Lorre said. “I’m _not_ infallible, unfortunately.” The sun felt nice on his bare head, on his shoulders. He was going to miss it.

“In the reign of Queen Ryllis you blinded an entire invading army. You once turned a desert to grass. You can call water out of stone. You ensorcelled the Hearthstone Abbey so that no rain fell on their grounds for three months after the Mother Priestess insulted you.”

“I’m terribly petty,” Lorre agreed. “Why did you request my assistance, again?”

“I know what she said.” Gareth watched him across sunshine and waves and time and hope. “I know that was after she publicly denounced all magicians as unnatural abominations.”

“Which was the day after she said it to my face. And of course I went and proved her right.” He touched wood, felt it hum: not the same key as a living tree, but the resonance of precisely what it was here and now, part of the melody. Very gently, he asked a favor of it: to shift, to change, to merge and join with other bits of wood, to flow into the curve of a shape that’d float and sweep across waves and carry two men.

He added, “The desert was only asking water to move. The story about the army’s exaggerated. I played with the light and the reflections from the armor of the front lines and their eyesight. The rest of them panicked and ran away, and anyway it wore off.” The wood listened obligingly, and began to stir.

“But you did do something. And you saved the Queen, and her country.”

“You,” Lorre said, “seem to know my life better than I do.” Curls of vine and kelp offered strength and shape, guiding. The boat found an identity, a purpose. “Have you made a study out of me?”

A pause provided an answer; Lorre let the boat shape itself for a moment and glanced over.

Gareth was blushing again. “No. Yes. Not exactly.”

“That covers all your possible answers perfectly nicely.”

“I knew you were the strongest magician the world’s ever seen,” Gareth said. “I read what I could find. Only in the last few weeks, though. It’s not—I mean, I didn’t…”

“You weren’t sitting around obsessing over me and writing overwrought melodramatic poetry?”

“No, I—did someone? Really?”

“Half a century ago.” Lorre waved a hand, accidentally made a bit of driftwood perk up, hastily refocused. “He was a terrible poet and he got the details all wrong—I’m not burdened by the _longing weight of a thousand peerless ages_ , thank you, even if he meant it metaphorically—but he wasn’t bad in bed. Or in a hayfield. I think. I’ve forgotten.”

Gareth looked at him for a minute, and then came over and sat down beside him. “How many ages, then?”

“What?”

“How many ages? Without, um, any peers. Any equals. Any company that didn’t involve terrible poets trying to flatter you—” He was smiling: purposefully teasing but in a very gentle way, an amusement that reached out and included the world and Lorre himself, an invitation to laugh along with ridiculousness rather than at it. Lightening a weight, perhaps.

“ _You_ can stop that,” Lorre said, meaning any attempt to cajole or comfort him; and showed the wood what he wanted in terms of seats and benches, for a moment. “You should’ve known what to expect, then. If you know so much about me.”

“I don’t,” Gareth said. “I didn’t. I don’t think I could’ve guessed. Do you need help? More wood? Anything to eat?”

“No.”

They sat in silence, for a while.

The sun brushed Lorre’s naked toes, and Gareth’s arms under rolled-up sleeves, and the graceful curves of a conjured vessel.

Gareth got up and found a nectarine. Settled back down at Lorre’s side. Peeled it. Held out a piece.

“This doesn’t cost much,” Lorre said. “Don’t feel you have to.”

“I can’t not do anything.”

“I’m eating this because I like nectarines.”

“I know.”

Lorre glared at him. Took another segment. The prince was offering. He might as well.

Gareth set the rest of the nectarine down on a small dusted-off rock right next to Lorre’s knee, and pulled out his book.

“Three days,” Lorre said, “because I can only push the winds and tides so far without causing a lot of disruption. And I can’t do what I did to transport us because I need to know where I’m landing. I wouldn’t get us stuck in a mountain—I can feel that much—but I need to know where to aim, what direction to walk, where to pop out. And it’s harder over long distances. And when I’m having to bring something not-me along.”

“Oh.” Gareth’s eyebrows did a small worried tugging-together. “So it wasn’t that easy.”

“It was. You’re not that heavy, and it was just up there.” He tipped his head toward the cliff. “Now you know.”

“Hmm.”

“You’re the one who said I don’t lie to you. Read to me.”

“I thought you didn’t like Lady Cavendra.”

“I don’t mind the novel. And I can use it as a background anchor.”

“Like assistance with meditation,” Gareth agreed, inexplicably happy-sounding for someone who’d just been told to read as background, and opened the book. “Helpful. I’ll skip the bits about you, shall I?”

“Please.”

“So.” Gareth flipped a page or two, paused. “Arrival on a comet? Just after? ‘And she bethought herself, upon awakening, of seeking shelter in this strange land; but yet there no shelter seemed of need, for the air itself lay warm upon her skin, and the heavens did pour golden light, such that Lady Margaret found herself refreshed and at ease…’ ”

His voice was soft and expressive, weaving itself into sun and waves. Golden light, Lorre thought, amused; and then stopped really thinking, simply sinking into story and sensation and the burning dancing shapes of the souls of the world. Everything blurred and mingled, because nothing was inseparable: Gareth’s low amber Northern-Marches-by-way-of-Middle-Lands-schooling burr, the glow of an imagined heavenly voyage, the sweetness of tropical air and the rhythm of ocean, alive and pounding, joined with the shore and the sand and the rocks and the driftwood and the sunset and Lorre himself, a fragment of one huge radiant web with shimmering threads, linking them all, and if he asked or nudged or imagined, those threads would move or step aside or stir to his hand…

He knew somewhere in the visible tangible world his body sat on sand, at sundown, and touched driftwood, while an optimistic prince perched on a rock and read aloud. He felt that too, distantly.

He never had been able to teach anyone precisely how he did magic, because no one he’d ever met had felt it quite the way he did. Some had come close—like Lily, brilliantly gifted—but even she was human, through and through.

Lorre—was not. Not precisely. At least half, as far as he knew. And the humming singing crackling luminous world opened itself up to him, and let him see and breathe and taste its immanence.

He opened his eyes to oncoming starlight in a barely-blue world, a kiss of silver and satin over a smudge of royal purple sunset. He drew a breath, felt his chest move, felt the slight tension of arms and legs that hadn’t stirred for a while. He wondered briefly whether he’d forgotten to measure time again; he touched his cheek, involuntarily. He did not expect a dragon’s scales, but he remembered them. Growing lost inside a shape-change would do that; the search for human skin was an instinct, or a comfort, these days.

He did not want to forget himself again. Not like that.

Gareth’s voice finished softly, “ ‘…and the Lady of the Green Stars did bestow upon Lady Margaret her own bracelet in turn, such that all should know by the exchange they would ever be true friends, and Lady Margaret’s heart did rejoice.’ ” He sounded closer; he was closer, Lorre discovered, having shifted to sit right at Lorre’s side. He’d buried his toes in the sand, trouser-legs rolled up; that and his wide eyes made him younger, washed in starlight.

Gareth added, quietly, “You did make us a boat.” He looked from Lorre to the shoreline; a graceful swan’s curve of boat, large enough to fit two grown men and provisions in comfort, stood up proudly at the edge of lapping water. “She’s beautiful.”

“She is.” Lorre ran a hand through his hair, unfolded one leg, stretched it out across cooling sand. Gareth sounded impressed but unafraid; Gareth had looked at his magic and seen beauty.

That ached, in a confusing way: he loved that Gareth had said so, because of course it was beautiful, it all was beautiful; but Gareth should have said _dangerous, frightening, inhuman_ as well, because Lorre was that too, and refusing to see as much was unutterably foolish.

He said, “You can load some provisions, and I’ll change into something more practical for travel,” and only then realized how far his robe had slid up, revealing most of his left leg. He was no doubt horrifying a rustic Northern prince with a scandalous glimpse of bare tanned thigh.

He did not hastily tug fabric down, because this was his home and Gareth had come to find him and the prince _should_ know exactly who he was. He did get to his feet, though, gathering robe-folds around himself. “I expect silk and brocade wouldn’t wear well. Snow and rain and mountain goats…I’ll be back in a moment.”

Gareth blinked. Twice. And said nothing.

“Provisions?” Lorre nudged. “I’ll toss a few things down.”

“Things,” Gareth said. “Right. Yes. Of course."

“We shouldn’t need much. It’s only a few days.”

“Yes. Right.” Gareth woke back up from his mysterious distraction. “You’ll want to be warm. We’re into the winter. The rain. Once we get to the North. You should, um. Layers. Furs. Magic.”

“Yes, thank you, I remember rain.” He left the prince standing on the beach beneath starlight, and walked on air up to the opening of his rock-dwelling, and ducked inside. He did not know what Gareth was thinking; he told himself it did not matter whether a prince of the Mountain Marches disapproved of un-magician-like behavior or of Lorre in particular.

In any case, he was used to the latter.

He did not have much to wear, not having brought much in the way of heavy clothing along when he’d departed the cities and clusters of humanity. He sighed, said to tumbled luxurious satins and diaphanous robes, “If you wouldn’t mind…?” and pictured what he needed: thick close weave, tight water-resistant fabric, wool and fleece. The fabric grumbled a bit but cooperated: it was meant to be worn, to be used, and it fell to that purpose. He took it apart, down at the seams of existence, and rewove it; he drew layers and disparate colors and patterns together.

He had far fewer clothes at the end, but several good sturdy shirts and trousers and a thickly lined long coat in glimmering raspberry and gold, courtesy of two former flowing shirts and a bit of a loose gilt-lined scholar’s gown. He gazed at himself in shining mirror-stone for a moment; he appreciated the color, and the cut, elegant and high-collared and nicely fitted.

He slid a hand through his hair, remembering for a moment older braided styles, a dangling sapphire earring that’d matched his eyes, the tastes of mead and plum cakes at a feast; these days his hair tumbled past his shoulders, golden and messy and unadorned. He hadn’t worn jewelry since coming to the island, though he’d always appreciated the way he looked in it.

He knew it was vanity, knew it was beneath him as a former Grand Sorcerer and a generally terrible person in need of redemption. Nevertheless he liked knowing he’d done well, crafted a graceful bit of magic, added some prettiness to the world.

He let himself enjoy it for a breath or two; and then he put that enjoyment away, because it was an indulgence and he knew where indulging himself led.

He threw changes of clothing, a book or two, his supply of tea, into his pack. His pack was not large enough, but it found room. He even managed the kettle, rather to his own surprise. He hadn’t knowingly asked space to fold open that far.

He found his boots—real boots, the ones he’d worn upon arrival, so long ago—and dusted them off with a thought, and stepped into them.

He wiggled his toes. Strange. A reminder. Someone else’s shoes: an older life, another him. A magician who’d tried to bestride the world.

They were his boots, though. And he couldn’t outrun the man he’d been.

He picked up his pack without really thinking about the weight, and gathered bread and fruit, somewhat haphazardly—he could summon food if they needed more—and, almost an afterthought, a fair amount of money from one of the sea-chests. He assumed gold would still be acceptable, even if extremely out-of-date as far as the monarch printed on the coins; Gareth, he recalled, had nearly run out of money, so more would likely be useful.

He poked his head out over the stone balcony ledge. “Are we ready?”

Gareth, standing on the boat, turned. A bit of his cinnamon-forest hair drifted in the breeze, under stars. “Do you have fresh water, up there?”

“Ah. Right. I can handle that, you understand, along the way.”

“I’m sure you can,” Gareth agreed. “But what if you’re busy, or saving your strength? Some reserves would be helpful.”

“Oh, fine…” That was easy enough, though he had to sort out a means of conveyance; he ended up coaxing water into an old wine bottle. He tossed it down to Gareth, who said, “Thanks.”

“For what?” Lorre grabbed one more book, ran on air down the side of the cliff, let his feet hit the sand. Felt wrong. Boots. Not bare skin. His body already ached to drink in the world more clearly. “Let’s go and find your goats before I change my mind.”

Gareth finished stowing his own pack and looked up. “For listening to me. You didn’t have to.”

“It was a fair point. Why wouldn’t I listen?”

“I thought you might be offended. If I questioned your ability to get fresh water out of the ocean.”

“You can’t offend me. Well. Maybe twenty years ago. Ten. Five. We’ll need a good current…no, sit down, you can’t help with this part.”

“Years ago.” Gareth did sit down, gazing at him under starlit shimmer, between light in the sky and light on waves. “But not now?”

“I’m just done with all that,” Lorre said, with more feeling than he’d meant to. He sat on the curving side of the boat; he dangled his fingers into the water, breaking a glimmer of reflection. He drew urgency, presence, a rush; he asked the ocean to shift, the world to change, in a small spot here around their boat. He felt the edges of his hand drift and blur: to speak the language of water, he had to know it, to let it in, to become for a moment the knowledge of old deep rhythms and secrets. “I can’t go around being offended by humans all the time.”

Their boat slid out into night-blue waters quietly, swiftly, without fanfare. The current picked them up and took them, fast.

“Three days,” Lorre said. “Or less. Tonight, tomorrow, the day after. If I remember the oceans correctly. Tell me about your North.”

“About the mountain bandits? Of course, I should’ve—you’ll need to know the numbers, the timing of raids—”

“No. Or, well, yes. That too. But I meant your home.” He slid his hand out of the water, with a feeling like he should’ve left a fingertip or a breath or a bit of self behind. The magic would continue; set in motion, it would remain so. “What makes it real to you. What you’re trying to save.”

“Like an anchor?” Gareth shifted weight. “You need to know something about it, to do some sort of spell?”

“Something like that. I don’t know the Marches well. You do. Tell me what you love.”

Gareth drew a breath, let it out. Framed by flowing silver and velvet blue, he was happy suddenly, broad-shouldered and heroic, a prince asked to talk about his home. He tugged the tie out of his hair and ran both hands through spice-dark waves. “All right. Have you ever been there in summer? At sunrise, in the mountains? When the light comes up just right, over rocks and heather and the hint of snow in spring, and it’s all gold and pink and glowing, like the first-ever morning, and the air tastes like ice and sharp grass and fir needles, and you know you’re awake and alive…or the winter, too, when there’s a good fire in the hearth and hot cider and long nights with everyone gathered up at the Hall, everyone telling stories and singing songs because we’re all in the dark together, the way we _should_ be together, side by side…”

“You and the goats,” Lorre said, but lightly. Gareth spoke of home with such longing, audible and heartfelt. Gareth had a family and roots and a mountain hall. A prince whose family opened the doors and brought everyone inside. Togetherness in the dark.

“Sometimes.” Gareth did not take offense. “We make our own cheese. And grow our own turnips. My family’s carrot cake’s won prizes at the harvest fair, and before you ask, of course everyone knew my brother entered, and if anything it counted against him. How many people would love to say they’ve beaten their king in a baking contest? Dan’s really good, though. And everyone cheered when he won last year.”

“Your people love him. But your uncle didn’t, did he.”

“Uncle Osric…” Gareth sighed. “We knew Da was dying—we’d known that, oh, for years, we’d known he was sick…I’m not even sure Dan wanted to be king. I mean, he did, of course he did, he wanted to help people, he knew he’d be asked to take it up, we both knew. But I think he’d’ve really been happy learning to ice cakes and make goat’s milk cream puffs all his days. And Uncle Osric was so angry about it…we’d never known how much he resented it, not being next in line. We didn’t know he wanted it so very badly. The way he’d tell jokes with us at supper, or make Da laugh through the pain, or comfort our mother when she wept…I remember he taught me how to whistle. When we were all younger.”

“People,” Lorre said, “can be more than one thing. All at once. That doesn’t mean they’re not who they were, when they meant something to you. It’s all still true.” The hurt in Gareth’s voice—a young man’s hurt, bewildered and betrayed—should not tug at his heart. Shouldn’t make him want to reach out, to rest a hand on Gareth’s knee.

Gareth, he thought, believed in people. Had believed, at least. Still wanted to. The same way Gareth believed that the most powerful magician in the world _had_ to help: because quests could be rewarded, because some good remained, because somewhere the universe would be kind and true and full of stories on a long winter night, with a farmer-king who baked cakes for his people, and a younger brother who set out to bring home aid.

“I know.” Gareth pulled up a knee, wrapped his arms around it. “I know people’re complicated. Sometimes they leave, in the night. And then other people see them riding at the head of a raid on the northern pastures.”

Lorre said, rather helplessly, “I’m sorry.” He knew that was the sort of thing people said; he knew he wasn’t much good at comfort. Too old for that. Too amoral. At some point in the past he might’ve shrugged and supported a usurping uncle, especially if the man promised to support magic and the old ways in turn.

He added, “I can’t make the past not’ve happened. But maybe I can protect your goats.”

“You can do anything,” Gareth said. Light caught in his eyelashes, painted the side of his face: silver over the line of a cheekbone. “Or nearly anything. You’re the last great magician.”

“Our new Grand Sorceress would have something to say about that.” The night was growing brittle and icy, unless that was his bones. Lorre put out a hand, pulled light and heat and energy from his own veins and from the air: borrowing thrumming sparking flecks of gold. He’d thrown in a small brazier and stray wood; he lit the fire for them both, amid water and night. “I might be the last of—something. But they’re rebuilding, down South. There’ll be magicians again.”

“They won’t be you.”

Lorre had to laugh. “No one’s me. Not even me. Not anymore.”

Gareth uncurled from his forlorn leg-hugging pose. Held out both hands to the fire. “You care whether I’m cold.”

“I care whether _I’m_ cold. It’s only going to get worse, sailing North.”

“You tell me you’re selfish,” Gareth said. “You tell me you’re not what I think. But you’re here. Helping me.”

“It’s a mistake,” Lorre said. “Bringing me back to the world…do you know how many people hate me? And what it’ll do to the politics, the treaties, the balance of power…”

“But you’re still here.”

“You were very convincing.”

“Was I?”

“No,” Lorre said. “Yes. Maybe.”

And Gareth laughed. “What was it you said? Covering all the possible answers?”

“Something like that. You should get some rest.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t sleep much. I do sleep!—I enjoy it—” Gareth was looking at him oddly, amused or impressed. “But I don’t _need_ to. Much.”

“Do you need to—”

“Keep the magic going? No. It’ll carry us.” He touched the water again, felt the brief murmur of connection. “Until I ask it to stop. Though there might be unexpected hazards. Whirlpools. Merchant ships. Giant sea turtles as large as an island.”

“Are there?”

“There were,” Lorre said. “Once. I haven’t seen any in decades. Not that I’ve looked, I suppose. They might still be out there.”

“Tell me about them?”

“I’m not a storyteller.”

“Did you meet a giant sea turtle?”

“They don’t talk,” Lorre said. “Not exactly. It was more…impressions. Slow, and vast, and not terribly interested in me. Like stones, almost, but more in motion, swimming onward. They aren’t really very fond of people, or they weren’t, back then.”

“They? More than one?”

“The two I met were traveling together,” Lorre explained, and then found himself telling Gareth about island-sized sea turtles and a search for ancient sandy hatching grounds and the calm deliberate tug of instincts, a sense of companionship, a mate and a pull toward new life. Gareth settled down by the fire, wide-eyed, wrapped up in warmth, and listened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Oh No There's Only One Bed At The Inn.
> 
> Also, Gareth's book is a little homage to Lady Margaret Cavendish's _The Blazing World,_ from 1666.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they have a conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the beginning of the next chapter, but that was getting really long! So this seemed like a good place to split it. :-)

The world got colder. Clouds drifted. Land faded out of sight. Currents changed: the chillier waters of the North, versus the sun-touched turquoise of the islands. Lorre sighed internally and huddled into his coat and kept his small fire going, light and heat amid oncoming grey. Gareth, with a not insignificant amount of tact, offered to make tea, and produced nectarines and sweet oranges with impressive regularity, and asked about catching fish.

“I can,” Lorre said. “I can just ask. More or less.”

“Oh. But you don’t have to—wait, if you haven’t yet, does that mean you don’t eat meat—”

Lorre these days felt a mild amount of guilt about doing that—calling something alive to him, purely for that specific purpose; he’d caused enough harm to others—but only a mild amount. He’d done far worse. “If you want I can do that now—”

“No, this is fine, we’ve got bread and cheese—” Gareth bit his lip. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“We’re not back to that, are we? You haven’t and I do eat meat. Just say so, if you want something.”

“No,” Gareth said, and then went quiet for a few minutes. Their boat arrowed through silver currents, leaving ripples of speed like enchanted fletching. A hint of rain flavored the air.

Lorre nudged more heat into the fire, in its brass cup. A raindrop, two, hit the back of his hand.

Gareth said, “You don’t like doing it. Is that it?”

“Don’t you dare say I’m a good person.”

“I think worrying about it means you’re at least part of the way there.”

“And I think,” Lorre said, “you’re depressingly young.” The rain picked up; it splashed against his coat, his cheek, the wood of their boat. He felt his pulse jump in answer, catching the rhythm and sound: tides tugged at the threads of his magic for a moment. He did not particularly want to be wet, so he nudged at the air until a small swirling shield formed overhead, deflecting drops.

“You can control the weather.”

“Small-scale. It’s harder than you’d think. Or easier. The change isn’t hard, but it affects everything else, all the other…” He didn’t know how to explain, not to someone non-magical. “The tapestries. The weaving. The world.”

“Which is why you haven’t stopped the rain. Just pushed it over there. And also why the fish.”

“We’re not talking about the fish.”

“Maybe,” Gareth said, “I’m not as young as you think I am. How old are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not—”

“I’ve forgotten. Older than you. Decades. Centuries.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You…don’t?”

“I believe you’re older than I am,” Gareth said. “I believe you might not recall the exact year. If they had years, back then.”

“I can turn you into a toad.”

“I don’t believe you don’t remember anything about being young. About the decade, the time, what it was like. You must’ve had a family. A home.”

“I don’t—” Lorre began, and stopped, because it was a lie and he knew it and a magician’s words always had power. They burned in his throat, on his tongue, like scorched silver.

He looked away. Into the embers. Leaping flames shot sparks skyward. Heat seared his face. His eyes watered.

A spark flared, sizzled, faded. The fire crackled, a counterpoint to the rain around them.

Gareth said, “I’m sorry.” He hadn’t flinched from the sparks.

“I _am_ older than you are,” Lorre said. “I’m older than almost everyone. Older than half the Middle Lands kingdoms, and the Goddess-Church, and probably the trees this boat’s made of. I’m _not human_ , Gareth.”

Those princely chocolate-and-smoke eyes went a little wider at that, but Gareth only said, “You sound pretty human to me.”

“Half. Or—my father was. Human. As far as I know.” He picked up a splinter of fire, a stray fleck of amber; turned it around in fingertips, understood the size and shape and heft of the light. He let go: it hung unsupported in the air, twirling gradually, held by his request. “I don’t remember much about being young.”

“You don’t have to tell me. If you don’t want to.” Gareth was watching the bit of flame as it danced, but then looked past it, at Lorre’s face. His gaze was open, honest, transparent. “It wasn’t a fair question. I really am sorry.”

“You don’t need to…” Lorre gave up on finding reasons, arguments. Let the fire-fleck flutter back to join its friends. “You don’t need to. Say it.”

Gareth gave him a little half-shrug plus head-tip— _yes, but I do anyway_ —and said, “Tea?”

“Fine.”

A pause happened. Gareth found the kettle and Lorre talked water into being fresh instead of salt, with the susurration of the rain forming a backdrop. Gareth poured.

Lorre said, “I grew up in Averene. Only it wasn’t Averene, then. More a collection of squabbling baronies that kept trying to kill each other. My father liked roast pork and stabbing his enemies in the back, sometimes literally. My mother stayed with him for a season, a summer, and then she left. Into the river. I don’t mean she died. Have you heard the folk tale about the river maiden and the jealous baron? I was there. Well, technically I was the consequence.”

“The baron never sees her again,” Gareth said. “In the storybook versions I’ve heard, anyway. It’s not a happy story.”

“It’s all wrong anyway. Or not. I don’t know. I don’t even show up in the children’s tales, the ones tidied up for impressionable young minds. But, surprise, babies happen. Sometimes they get left on the baron’s barge by an angry wave. Or so someone told me. I can’t remember who. One of the castle maids, I think.”

“Did you ever see her again? Your mother?”

“No. Never. I tried, once. I do remember that. It was springtime and my father wanted me to poison a priest, I forget why. I went down to the river and threw myself in—don’t look like that, I knew I could breathe. I thought she’d come, if I begged hard enough.”

“Wait,” Gareth said. “Your father what?”

“Oh, he always wanted me to do magic for him.” Lorre looked down into tea, let steam brush his face, gazed at lemon-scented herb-sweet liquid instead of the past. “We knew I was powerful from the start. I’ve always been what I am. I honestly can’t recall most of what he asked me to do; it’s been way too long for that. I only remember that one because it was the first time he’d asked me whether I could kill someone with magic, and I knew I could, but I didn’t think it was fair. I’d done everything else—gold, earthquakes, sudden crop failures on a rival’s estate, whatever else it was—and he told me he’d throw me out and have me burned as an abomination if I didn’t do this one too.”

“How old were you?”

“Do you know, I don’t actually know. Young enough that he hadn’t married me off to anyone, old enough that I’d overheard him talking about it. He wanted magical grandchildren. But I don’t know the year.”

Gareth’s jaw clenched. “That’s horrible.”

“Hero,” Lorre said. “The world’s not fair. And no rescue’s ever guaranteed.”

“No,” Gareth said. “No, of course not, but—but you don’t believe that. You can’t. You came with me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lorre said. “It’s just…you were there. And persistent. And you had a book.”

“It matters.” Gareth’s eyes were stubborn as farmland, as freshly tilled earth. “Maybe not to you, but to me. My people. Everyone you’ll help. They matter. Don’t say that’s not real.”

“You’re certainly real.”

“You didn’t agree to do it,” Gareth said. “Murdering the priest.” It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Lorre said. “But don’t think it was a firm moral stance. I didn’t like my father, either, and it didn’t feel honorable. That doesn’t mean I’ve never killed anyone.”

“I know you have, if even half those stories’re true.”

“All of them,” Lorre said. “Or none of them. Or it depends on which way you face.” He felt tired, suddenly: old as his bones really were, ancient and weary. “I want to be a bird for a while. Or a cloud. I’ll come back, don’t worry.”

“A cloud…” Gareth’s face transformed, full of awe.

“Stop thinking about me like that.” He pushed himself to his feet, held out a hand; needed to be someone, something, lighter and less weighty and unbroken for a moment. A shimmer of light. A leap of heron. A gull on the wind, unthinking, airy, borne aloft.

He felt the magic shift and rise and pull at his edges, instinctive and easy as ever. He wanted, he craved, he yearned; it answered and took shape.

It did not hurt, because it never did, not unless he was truly exhausted and forcing himself past his limits. That was something else he’d never known how to explain: the simplicity of it, the letting go, the flowing. The motion lived forever just under his skin; he fell into the form he wanted, _because_ he wanted it, body arching and curving and becoming. He did not guide it, much; he felt the soft blooming brush of feathers, the quick tip of his head, the sweep of wings—

He leapt upward, landed on the air, tumbled into flight. His clothing fell away; Gareth had stood up abruptly and was gazing upward, a short auburn-haired prince amazed by a firebird in the storm.

Lorre had not entirely intended to be a firebird, but he liked color and plumage, and the wingspan was good. He dove through breeze and rain, felt drops against his feathers, flung himself higher. The past and the weariness vanished; he knew the beat of his wings, the freedom of the sky, the crash of thunder and the rush of racing past waves. He did not have to be anything Gareth saw, any stories the world might tell, not then.

He burst out from clouds, up above them, trailing storm-drops like streamers from his wings. He balanced on the currents, alone above the world.

Hanging suspended amid a pearlescent grey sky, drenched in water and cool air, he let even that go. Let the lines and borders of this shape begin to dissolve and melt and expand.

He vanished into air, clouds, water, lightning: he felt the raindrops, was each raindrop, a tiny quivering point of life. He moved with the waves, coiling and rocking and endless and vast. He crackled with energy, poised for a sizzling white-hot burst; the bolt flew, brilliant, and the bit of Lorre that was lightning shuddered in ecstatic release.

He drank it all in the way the ocean drank up the storm, down below: connected, singing, spread out and transcendent.

Somewhere people moved, brighter quicker points of life, scarlet and topaz and ruby and tawny gold; they built bridges, sold bacon, danced in a meadow, wrote a sonnet, made love, taught children their letters. They were everything he was, too, and everything he wasn’t, because he never had been precisely one of them.

He could reach out and touch them, if he wanted. Focus might be difficult, at a distance, but he could make someone’s field sprout unexpectedly faster or ask a river to rise, and it probably would, because it was him also, in a far-off sort of way.

He wondered vaguely about bandits. What did they do with the goats and the cheeses and whatever else they’d been taking from the farms? Perhaps he could find out. But he’d have to know which little human torchlights meant bandits, as such, first.

One particular glimmer nagged at his attention. Not because it was noisy; the opposite, in fact.

That glimmer was calm as a tree-root, deep and settled, all acorn-brown and smoky garnet, and was currently sitting on a small boat in the ocean, warming hands over Lorre’s own magical fire and reading a book. It’d folded Lorre’s clothing, too, and set the stack neatly near the warmth.

Without entirely meaning to, Lorre swung back into himself and out of clouds and lightning; he slid down through raindrops, pulling pieces in, coalescing. He landed with both feet bare on the deck, and hair getting into his eyes; he shook his head to make it stop doing that.

He said, “You’re reading.”

“You said you’d be back.” Gareth glanced up from the book, finger marking his place; whatever else he’d been about to say died on his lips. His cheeks gathered color, vivid.

Lorre picked up his shirt from the pile. “You were warming my clothes.”

“I thought you might be cold.” Gareth was now fixedly staring at Lorre’s left shoulder, determinedly avoiding anything lower. “I thought…it might be nice. And warm. And good. I mean it would feel good. Having warm things. If I were cold.”

“You’re not wrong.” Lorre pulled on trousers, long coat, socks and boots. His hair fell over one shoulder; he touched it, asked it to braid itself. “It does feel nice. Thank you.”

Gareth made a very small sound, hand lifting, dropping.

“Question, or comment?”

“Nothing. Neither. I—never mind.”

“Hmm.” Lorre stretched out across the closest bench, lounging under a rain-shield and firelight, bones and muscles more contented in themselves. He missed sunshine and warm sand, but for now he thought he could stay here, restlessness soothed. Their boat leapt over waves. “You weren’t at all worried that I’d leave?”

“No,” Gareth said. “You said not to worry.”

“And I don’t lie to you. Right.”

Gareth set the book aside. “It really is who you are. Magic.”

“Like I’ve told everyone.”

“I know that,” Gareth said, “every story says so, I _knew_ that, but…you just are. Like breathing.”

“ _And_ I told you I’m not human.”

“Is that why it’s been hard for you to teach?” Gareth shifted to face him more fully in the fireglow, under the pattering rain. The drops spun off the the side, away from Lorre’s lazily spinning shield. “To work with other magicians, I mean. The folk stories, the ballads—they say you get impatient, or arrogant, or bored, you go off and leave apprentices alone to get into trouble, you get tired of running the school and you leave it to someone else, you have a fight with a companion and leave them behind. But that’s not right, is it? You can’t tell them _how_ they should light a candle or what to do to find a hidden wellspring, because you don’t do magic. You _are_.”

Lorre lay very still, sprawled across his bench; after a second he said, “Yes,” and it hurt in an unexpected way, like being seen when he’d thought he was invisible, like being stabbed by compassion, like the shock of the first time he’d stepped off a cliff and onto air.

Something had held him up, then. The world had known him and carried his weight, though he had not directly asked it to.

“The ballads aren’t _right_ ,” Gareth said. “They don’t do you justice.”

“Oh, they do.” Lorre waved a hand. “I _am_ impatient and arrogant. I’m awful at actually running a school. And I get bored. I’m terrible company for any length of time. I’ll be astonished if you still want my assistance, given another day.”

Gareth looked exactly like someone about to protest, to argue, _but that isn’t FAIR,_ in the face of the contrary; he looked like someone who still believed in fairness, and who thought that Lorre deserved it. He opened his mouth.

“Don’t say it isn’t fair,” Lorre said. “What is? Anyway I’ve always been an awful teacher, they’re all thoroughly right about that, I don’t know how I do anything. And I don’t know how anyone more human does anything, either.”

“There’s no one else like you,” Gareth said. “No one else, not ever—” Abruptly he got up, and came over to Lorre’s side of the fire; he sat down on the deck, just barely fitting his shoulders between the bench and the brazier, close enough for a kiss if Lorre sat up. Light turned his hair to copper and bronze.

“There’ve been a few,” Lorre said, not moving. “Throughout history. A tree-maiden in love with a prince, a river-spirit paying a visit to a pretty farmer’s daughter, the resultant children, that sort of thing. It obviously happens. No one else I ever even heard about, though, in even my personally extensive lifetime. I did look, for a while.”

“I’m not sure I’d’ve been brave enough to ask for your help,” Gareth said. “If I’d thought about it more.”

“You?” Lorre propped himself up on an elbow. “Of course you would. You’d’ve come and found me and told me your goats needed my assistance, so you weren’t leaving without me.”

Gareth laughed, though he looked somewhat apologetic, after. “I wish I could do more. Give you more. Anything you want.”

“If there’s something I need from the North, I’ll ask you. I might want cheese. Or award-winning carrot cake. Or ale. Or copies of whatever books you’ve got that I might’ve not read.”

“You can have anything in the library. Want me to make more tea? I’ve got cheese, too. In my pack.”

“Of course you do,” Lorre said. “Why not? Feed me, fuss over me, keep me warm.”

“I can do that,” Gareth said, quick and sincere; and rather to his own surprise Lorre had to look up at the clouds for a moment, because his cheeks had warmed with some sort of half-embarrassed perplexing emotion. The clouds boomed thunder down, amused.


End file.
